September 2014

There are many cases where an ecommerce plugin from WordPress can benefit your website. WordPress is a trusted website, with over a 60 percent share of the CMS market, which makes it a great tool for any ecommerce webmaster.

A WordPress plugin for your site can also be a great solution for your store or website if you have a limited product catalog, or simple products composed mostly of small electronics or home goods. If your website functions mostly as a blog, then a WordPress plugin is also essential.

However, you should definitely avoid a WordPress ecommerce plugin if:

• You don’t have a reliable developer

If you’re an ecommerce owner and you don’t have your own developer and you’re not a developer, some other hosted ecommerce solutions could be a much better fit for you than a WordPress store.

• Your site has too many complex products

Creating complex and variable products takes significant customization—for many WordPress ecommerce plugins, you’ll need to add in additional third-party plugins in order to get what you want.

Make sure you scope out all of your complex product needs before deciding on a platform.

• You don’t want to manually update WordPress and the plugin

When a new version of WordPress is released with updates and security patches, you’ll want to update. In addition to keeping the WordPress core updated, you’ll also need to add other third party plugins that you’re using on the site, and make sure those are also up to date.

• You don’t have time to test the upgrades

If you’re not a developer or don’t want to pay for a developer’s time when your website’s backend needs to be updated, WordPress might not be the best choice. Most seasoned WordPress developers understand the urgency of testing the updates before they go live.